Staring Into the Sun
by Omega Devin
Summary: WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS. Just a tidbit I wrote after beating Final Fantasy VII. Five hundred years after the game ends, the story of the quest to save the Planet is told one last time before the ruins of Midgar.
1. Default Chapter

**Author's Note:** This is just a snippet I wrote after defeating Final Fantasy 7 last night (finally!)And I feel kinda dumb, because I CRIED at the end, and there was no reason to CRY at all!Except for the fact that it was just incredibly powerful and moving, and the little video clip at the end was just cool, but still sad.Why, I have NO idea.Maybe I was just being emotional.Anyway, this could be a one-shot, or I can extend it into a full-length written adaptation of Final Fantasy VII, if I could find a written script.If I do that, then I also have the epilogue written, which is chapter two here.But if anyone can get me the script, then I'll fill in the blank (that's a heck of a blank).But until then, enjoy!

**Staring Into the Sun**

**A Final Fantasy VII Snippet by Kyheena**

From the distance, it looked like a mountain, and a mountain it could have been, except on closer inspection, it was in actuality the remains of what was once the greatest feat of man-made technology in the world.

Now the grand city lay in rusted ruins, overgrown with the Planet's wild vegetation that covered the corroded medal in a mask that effectively hid the truth of what it once had been.Behind the collapsed walls, the metropolis that had once been bustling with broken lives now stood abandoned and forgotten, a monument of what humanity was, a long, long time ago.All and all, it was a sad sight of the dismal end of a great human civilization, a long-ago eminent city that time forgot, and hardly a sight worth seeing.However, if you were to make a trip to those ruins that marked where mighty Midgar rose from the dejected earth, for whatever reason, there was one monument that stood that was the last memory of a cataclysmic event that had occurred almost half a century before.

Before the broken gates stood nine figures that were normally alone, poised like guardians of the overgrown metropolitan marvel.Nine statues stood on their moss-covered pedestals, looking out towards the west, into the golden horizon, stained red and orange by the setting sun.They may have been alone most of the time, but there was not a man, woman or child on the Planet who did not know their names, as they were the saviors of the planet.Had it not been for them, then the Planet would have died, five hundred year ago.

A light wind was blowing from the east, rippling through the long, flowering grass and ruffling the graying-red fur of the creature that sat before the nine statues, looking up at them with a sense of awe and respect in his one good, yellow eye.Awe and respect, but there was something else there, too.Sadness, nostalgia, the type of look he got when he wished that he could see them all again, one last time.This was not the sight where they were laid to rest, just a memorial to their triumph over evil and restoring peace and order to the Planet.If he was younger, then he would brave the wild passages of the world to find their true places of rest, but now, time was finally catching up with him.When he was younger, he knew that there would be a day that they would part ways since their species were so very different, but mentally preparing himself did nothing in the fact that he had, in what seemed like a very short time, lost his dearest friends to the timely fate of an exhausted human lifespan.

Even now, after all these years, he still missed them.

"Gran'pa!" A small, childish cry behind him made Nanaki turn, his old neck stiff after staring at the monuments for what was probably hours, and smiled at the sight of three energetic balls of fire-red fur come bounding up to him from the grass.His youngest grandcub tripped over his own pawns as he came skidding to a halt besides his grandfather's much larger, shaggier form.Even with his puppy-like features, the cub's wide yellow eyes showed emotions of hurt, and had he been human, they probably would have been tearing."Nani and Luca are being mean to me!They say that I'm too small to play with them!"

"Oh really?" Nanaki said, cocking his head to one side, the many beads and feathers of his extensive headdress clicking together."Now why's that?"

"He's not big enough to play with us, Gran'pa!" One of the older cubs huffed as he appeared from the tall grass, trying to defend himself in why his younger brother couldn't play with them, their sister not too far behind."He still has his milk teeth!He would just get hurt!"

"I can beat you two up any day!" The youngest, Mamou, squealed, stamping his front paws."Besides, I don't need you jerks anyway! I can take care of myself!"

Nanaki knew that it would be in their parent's best interests if he broke up this fight now, but instead he only laughed, catching all three of the cubs by surprise.Mamou quickly forgot his anger and looked up at the older male curiously, and maybe a bit hurt, thinking that he was laughing at him."What's so funny, Gran'pa?"

"Nothing." Nanaki said, shaking his head."You just remind me of someone I knew once, a long time ago.And believe me, Mamou, you don't want to be like him.At least, not in the beginning, when I first met him."

"Ooh!Was it one of them, Gran'pa?" Luca squealed, bounding past them and up to the central statue, placing one paw on the worn-down marble pedestal."It was, wasn't it?"

"You mean you knew them, Gran'pa?" Mamou asked.Nani and Luca were a bit older than him, and therefore had been to the memorial before, but this was Mamou's first trip.Up until now, he had not even taken an interest in the figures that loomed over him."The ones who saved the world a long time ago?You met them when they fought Sephy-rath?"

Nani rolled his eyes."Sephi-_roth_, fuzz brains!"Mamou pouted, but Nanaki only laughed again.

"I more than just met them, Mamou.I was one of them."He nodded to the statue of a crouching animal, something that looked like a cross between a lion and a wolf, wearing feathers and beads in his mane.Mamou's eyes widened to an extent that they looked like they were going to pop out of his head as Nanaki rose, ignoring the pain in his joints as best as he could as he approached the statue, clearing away the moss with one large paw until words came into view.

"But it doesn't say its you!" Luca complained."It says, 'Red XIII'!"

"Yes, it does, but back then, it was what everybody knew me as.Back when I first met Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and the whole group that braves to take on Sephiroth alone, with a single airship and a couple of handfuls of Materia.I was there, children, from almost the very beginning to the very end, and not aday's that's gone by since the Meteor was destroyed that I have not thought about one of them."

"Wow!" All three cubs echoed each other.Even though this was old news to Luca and Nani, they always reacted as if it was the first time they had heard it.But it was Mamou that asked the question that Nanaki had been expecting to hear for a long time.

"Tell us the story, Gran'pa!"

Nanaki's one good eye widened at the request."That's quite a tall demand, little one, and it's a long story, as well.Your parents will skin me alive if we're not back by sundown.Why don't we save it for another day?"

"No, now!" Luca exclaimed."Here's the best place!I'm sure they would want to hear the story again!"Her eyes flashed up to the statues above them.

Nanaki looked back up at the statues, and studied them for a long moment, taking in every aspect of their detail as he never had before.The statues were so lifelike, so precisely similar, that it was like meeting them for the first time all over again.Even when they were made of stone, Cloud's eyes radiated the same passion that almost seemed to be glowing with Mako, as they did until his last days.Tifa displayed her well-carried strength underneath a gorgeous feminine figure, and Aeris was, as always, beautiful, innocent, and made him feel warm just by looking at her.There was Barret, strong and determined, always working what he saw was good, and Cid in hand with his trusty spear, complete with cigarette.The much younger version of himself was crouched, poised and ready to strike next to the ever smiling and joyous Cait Sith, whose courage and devotion turned out to be more reliable than his skills at fortune telling.Yuffie stood grinning down at them in her mischievous way, complete with Materia in hand, and even when cast in stone, Vincent maintained a sense of dignity and a dark presence around him that challenged the courage of even the bravest men.Once again, Nanaki's expression became sad as his heart was weighed down heavily by his longing to see them, to speak to them again.It was a heart ache almost too great to bare, but then he took his grandcub's words into account.

"All right.Sit down, children, and I will tell you the story.The story of a courageous SOLDIER and the force called AVALANCHE, of Materia and magic, love and corruption.It's a tale of betrayals, lies, and insanity, of a man twisted by his own warped thought and enough power to bring the Planet to its deathbed.But also, more importantly, it is a story about friendship, trust, dedication, and the love for life."

Luca was right.They _would_ like to hear their own story again.

As tragic and painful as it was, it was still _their_ story.


	2. Voices on the Wind

**Author's Note:** Just really quick; if I did do the written adaptation of FFVII, then this is the epilogue.Skips quite a bit, ne?It picks up RIGHT after the last FMV ends, before the credits begin.

**Voices on the Wind******

"Then, when it seemed as if the darkness had sealed our fate, came the new dawn, and never before had there been one so spectacular.I remember every detail of it.The black sky began to pale to a dark gray, as it always does, and then lightened to almost brilliant white, the sky blending to shades of red and pink and gold.We all stared at this miraculous event, as if we had never seen one before it, and when the first golden swell of the sun rose over the horizon, it was as if all of us – every living creature, every form of life imaginable in the planet – had been reborn, in body and in spirit.The world exploded in vibrant colors that we had forgotten; everything was green where it was once gray with death, and the air was filled with the chorus of hundred of birds, singing the hallelujah of our survival.Meteor was destroyed, and the Planet was saved.And before those who had lived, there was a whole new world laid out for us to explore all over again.

"Of course, those few who had faced Sephiroth alone in the core of the planet became instant heroes, and were looked up to by the people of the world to be the re-builders of the human race.With all Mako reactors destroyed world wide, they had to start all over again, but no matter what people said we were, we were not the saviors that they made us out to be.Yes, we did save the Planet, but that was not the real reason why we fought Sephiroth single-handedly, so to speak.Each one of us saved it for, more or less, a selfish reason, and I believe it would have hurt the survivors to hear us say that.All we wanted to do was rebuild our own lives, and to stop worrying about others, so it was in our best interests that we told everyone else to do the same.

"Tifa and Cloud stuck together after the whole ordeal, traveling from place to place by Chocobo, never really settling in anywhere, but, from what I heard, they were always happy together.Never married, or so the rumors said, but they did have beautiful children.Barret returned to Correl with his daughter, where they rebuilt the whole town, and the coalmines became profitable again.Ten years after Meteor, it became the richest town in the world.Yuffie returned to Wutai, Cid returned to Rocket Town, and Cait Sith returned to the Gold Saucer, so I guess that's were we can assume Reeve relocated as well, or somewhere close by, but we never actually saw him in the flesh again.It was Vincent that we saw even less of, even after our separation, but in the few times that we were reunited, he was always there, just as he had been when he joined our quest.I just hope that he was able to find peace in his life."

A small smile crept across Nanaki's mouth as he shook his shaggy head slowly before turning it up to greet that welcomed warmth of the sun."I guess, if any one of us was a savior, it was Aeris.She was the only one who died for the sole purpose of saving our world.She was the true martyr, not us, but even when it was all over, no one knew the poor flower girl's name, or that, without her, we would have all been doomed to die by Sephiroth's hand. When Sephiroth killed Aeris, Cloud had said that she would never laugh again…but he was wrong.It was on that day, when it felt as if the world had been born again, that we heard it, and even after all these years, I still don't think that we imagined it.We heard it, all of us; laughter, as good-natured and pure as you could ever imagine, drifting to us over the fresh, new breeze.And we all knew, without questioning each other, that it was Aeris.We understood then, also, that she wasn't really gone, nor was anyone else whom we lost during the reign of Sephiorth's terror.They had once again joined the Lifestream of the Planet from which we all came from, and were, therefore, one with the Planet, and one with us all, for all time.

"If you are to take any wisdom from this tale, my children, remember this one thing that your old Grandpa's told you today.Laughter is a universal language, and when the sun dawned the day after Meteor was destroyed, Aeris' laughter delivered us all one very clear, last message.

# We are free… we are free…

**_~Owari_**


End file.
